


Like Ares Comes the Bridegroom

by TrivialPursuit



Category: Winslow Boy (1999)
Genre: 3+1, F/M, Three and one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrivialPursuit/pseuds/TrivialPursuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three ways Catherine Winslow and Sir Robert Morton could have met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Ares Comes the Bridegroom

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Sappho's Fragment LP 111.
> 
> This work is probably horribly full of anachronisms but currently I can't be bothered to fix them. Perhaps at some point I'll go through and do a re-write.

_Raise high the roof-beam, carpenters._   
_Hymenaeus!_   
_Like Ares comes the bridegroom,_   
_Hymenaeus!_   
_taller far than a tall man._   
_Hymenaeus!_   
_Artists, raise the rafters high!_   
_Ample scope and stately plan--_   
_Mars-like comes the bridegroom nigh,_   
_Loftier than a lofty man._

_High lift the beams of the chamber,_   
_Workmen, on high;_   
_Like Ares in step comes the Bridegroom;_   
_Like him of the song of Terpander,_   
_Like him in majesty,_   
_-Sappho_

 

 

**Cambridge University, Cambridge**

The classroom is packed with students - mostly male, but there are three or four women in attendance - and a man is standing in the middle of the room lecturing about the art of cross-examination. As usual, some of the students are listening with rapt attention while others seem to only absorb a quarter of what is being said. There is a young woman sitting in the middle of the lecture hall - she is one of the rapt ones - listening, but with a slightly frown on her face, as though she cannot help but feel displeased about something. This has not escaped the attention of the man giving the lecture and he seems to slowly direct more and more of his speech toward her rather than the class at large, but his changing oration gives no visible change to her demeanour and by the end of the lecture the man seems to be even more displeased then she.

When the lecture is over the woman jumps to her feet, impatiently waiting for her row to file out, tapping her fingers in an irregular tattoo on the polished wood desks. When she finally gets out the young lady bounds to the front, tapping the lecturer on the arm. He turns and looks at her, shocked she thinks, for a moment.

'You're wrong, you know.' She holds out her hand, 'Catherine Winslow, by the way.'

'Charmed. Wrong about what?' He takes the proffered limb almost mechanically.

'Women's Rights. You've spoken out against us in Parliament.'

'Us? And yes, I have. Thus far I have yet to see a woman who holds the interest in voting who deserves that right. All the so-called Suffragettes seem to do is chain themselves to things and throw themselves under racehorses. I have yet to receive a knowledgable explanation of why women should get the vote. I assume you are here to attempt to educate me?' He smiles wryly.

'Who am I to attempt to correct your faults when even the great Miss Pankhurst has been unable to convince you?' She smiles innocently and he laughs. He offers her the arm unburdened by his lecture nots and she takes it, her other arm filled with her textbooks an sheafs of paper and they proceed out into the Quad.

 

 

**Whitehall, London**

His clerk, had, after ten years of working together, contracted a rather serious case of pneumonia and been unable to continue working with he and instead taken up residence in Devon, convinced that the sea air would enervate him. And thusly, he was left to attempt file his papers by himself, something that he was finding increasingly aggravating. Until today. The first thing he noticed as he walked in the door to his chambers was how clean it was, his rooms had fallen into disarray since his clerk's decampment, and yet, the room was spotless. He slung his coat and hat onto the coatrack and gracelessly dumped his briefcase in a chair before going over to inspect the filing cabinets; they were perfectly filed. It will be somewhat embarrassing to him, when he tells this story at a later date, that despite the fact that he noticed all this it took him several minutes and a throat-clearing to notice the fact that a young woman sat in a chair by the door to his inner office, a coat and bag carefully draped over her clasped hands.

'Did you do all this? Because I'm quite sure the cleaning staff will take umbrage.' She smiles at this.

'I want to work for you.' She says. It's a fact, but also a request, polite and concise, waiting for something, anything.

'Well, Miss MacEachran is an excellent housekeeper. I believe Sir-' She cuts him off, and he glowers. Very few people, let alone people who want something from him, cut him off when he's talking.

'I mean, I want to clerk for you. I have gone to university, I've got top marks. You'd consider me a perfectly acceptable candidate in all respects were it not for my sex.' She extended a sheaf of paper from her bag and brandishes it at him. And she's right, excellent marks, clearly knowledgable, and in most respects the perfect clerk on paper. 'The only reason I'm here and not becoming a proper barrister is that no university will admit me as a student of law.'

He makes a decision that he's sure he'll regret at the time but oddly never does.

'Fine, you've got a month probationary period and we'll see what happens.'

They cause quite a stir when the renowned Sir Robert Morton next enters the court room trailing a female clerk.

 

 

**Mayfair, London**

She stares dully at the wall, tracing the 'Trellis' wallpaper with her eyes and swinging her legs in intricate patterns, occasionally knocking her feet into the legs of the chair that is too tall for a child of her size as Mother fusses over the ribbons that hold her fashionably curled ringlets in place.

'Mother, it will be perfectly fine.' She finally says after several minutes of fussing and tugging, batting her mother's hands away and jumping off the chair and brushing off her rather ridiculous - in her nine-year-old mind - dress before running downstairs, and jumping into her father's outstretched arms. Her mother lets out a moan as she watches the dress crumple against her husband's front and a few curls come loose.

'Catherine Theodora Winslow, what did I say about that dress?' Dickie snickered quietly from the hall where he'd been waiting with his father and the maid, who had rushed over to the young girl and begins swiping the creases out of the young girl's dress.

'Violet, I'm fine! I can do it myself! Let me go!' The young girl squirms in the maid's grip before Violet, after receiving a nod of acceptability from Mrs Winslow, releases the girl into her father's arms.

The family, after some hubbub over coats and hats, are bundled into a taxi. They arrive after several minutes at the house of one of Mr Winslow's wealthier colleagues at the bank. Mr Winslow is almost immediately swept into a discussion on Mr Gladstone's policies. Mrs Winslow is likewise engaged with the colleagues' wives. Dickie and Catherine shuffle off into the games of some of the other children, mostly boys, as they play around the large Christmas tree that dominates one corner of the room.

'You have to play the princess, you're the girl,' one of the boys says as the others sneer at Catherine's insistence that she could be a knight just like the others.

'But Joan of Arc was a woman and she fought for her king,' she protests.

'Well she was a Frog and my father says that Frogs have always been a bit off in the head. If you're not going to play by the rules you should just go and play dollies with the other girls. It was very generous of us to even let you play with us.' Another boy says pompously.

'Well your rules are silly.' Catherine stomps away and dramatically flings her body down into a window seat.

'Hello.' She turns quickly. A boy, probably about ten or eleven, sits on the other end of the window seat, staring at her somewhat peevishly.

'Hello,' then, remembering the manners that her mother drilled into her head, she sticks out her hand as she has seen her father do when making a new acquaintance, 'Catherine Winslow.'

'Robert Morton.' He, after looking at her hand somewhat doubtfully for a second, shakes it.

'Well,' she racks her mind for a subject of conversation, 'Salisbury's making a real mess of Home Rule, don't you think?'

'I suppose, but Ireland is part of the empire and we shouldn't just give them autonomy, it's tantamount to breaking up the core of Great Britain.' Robert Morton doesn't seem to think it odd to be discussing this with a nine-year-old girl, or if he does he never shows it.

'But that's where you're wrong. Look at India, it is independent of Parliament yet it functions under British rule, can Ireland not have an Irish or Irish-approved government that is responsible to Britain?' He smiles and Catherine grins in response. They spend the rest of the night talking about whatever crosses their minds.


End file.
